


I was angry with my friend

by Cartonsofcartoons



Series: Seasoned to taste (Much salt, very savoury) [8]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Although Iron Man makes no appearance, Civil War Team Iron Man, Gen, Not Steve Friendly, POV Bucky Barnes, Resentment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-07-05 03:49:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15855621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cartonsofcartoons/pseuds/Cartonsofcartoons
Summary: The worst part of having hopes about a future, about happiness, was when they were dashed because of another’s obsession with the past, with grief.No, actually, the worst part of having hopes were when they were dashed by a friend.





	I was angry with my friend

 

It had been 4 weeks since Bucky Barnes had been pulled out of cryosleep because a cure for his triggers had been found. Four weeks since he got his mind back. Four weeks in which his therapist worked with him to make him healthy, to help him accept what he had done as the Winter Soldier and regret it without taking the blame for it. It was slow going but he was doing it nonetheless.

 

That wasn't all he was doing. He was also advised to try and learn what the modern world was like. How it had changed beyond the guns and ammunition. Those changes he already knew of from his long stint as the Winter Soldier. No, he was busy learning about the rest.

 

Or, he was trying.

 

Steve was making it….difficult. He wanted to hang out all the time, which Bucky didn’t mind, but he also wanted to keep talking about the past, which Bucky did mind. He finally had hope for a life he could live, for a future he wanted to be a part of. It was difficult to think of it when all Steve wanted to talk about was Peggy, and the Howling Commandos and Erskine.

 

After all, that was only a small part of their life. Bucky and many more memories of having to haul the waifish form of his friend from an alleyway where he'd been dumped after picking a fight with the big guys. He had more memories of his dates in Brooklyn than he did of Peggy Carter. Why Steve only wanted to talk about the war, he didn’t understand.

 

It was annoying but Bucky let it be. Steve could try to monopolize his days all he wanted but at least Bucky’s night were his own. Sometimes he wished they weren’t, nightmares of the people he’d killed coming to him in his sleep but even that faded. On night when those faces were too clear, too accusing, Bucky did the homework his therapist and assigned him, caught up with the world.

 

That day, he went into YouTube. He’d wanted to look up the science advancements the world had made but held himself back from that. Too many held the name Stark in the name and it was the faces attached to that name he was trying to avoid.

 

He tried to venture into music but that proved to be a mistake when a thumping bass sound in a song reminded him of the Winter Soldier murdering a man in a club.

 

Food, he decided. That should be neutral enough. He plowed through videos of recipes, of something called ‘cheese pull’, of people making giant versions of food, of them making miniature versions of it. Finally he arrived at a video of people just eating.

 

He clicked on the one of ‘People try their fave childhood food’ in amusement.

 

 _“-This is not as good as I remembered it.”_ The man on the screen said, a few second before moving off screen to throw up.

 

Bucky laughed. And then he stopped.

 

Not as good as he remembered it.

 

* * *

 

Bucky doesn’t know why the words stay with him, but they do. And they keep playing in his mind when he talks to Steve.  ‘More like when he talks to you’, says the voice in the same tone as it says ‘ _Not as good as I remember it’_. Dismissive,scoffing. Bucky wonders if it’s a remnant of the programming but his therapist tests him over the next week and says it’s not that.

 

‘Not as good as I remember it’, as Steve talks about Peggy once again. And then much to his surprise, the sentiment shows up again when Steve talks about the Accords, about Tony Stark, about SHIELD.

 

After all, Bucky has no remembrance of these topics, does he?

 

So he wonders, what exactly does he remember of his friend.

 

And the more he thinks, the less he likes it. Because he remembers hauling the tiny frame of his friend from the alleyway. He also now remembers the friend going out of his way to pick a fight. He remembers consoling his friend after his mother died. He also now remembers the friend’s mother looking tired after working days and nights because her son’s fights had given her more bills than she could afford.

 

And he thinks of this man, not so tiny anymore but not that different. And he thinks of Tony Stark and wonders. Does he have the same expression on his face from dealing with the aftermath of Steve’s righteous tirades? Does he wish he hadn’t gone easy on his friend and dealt with him the way those guys in the alley had?

 

And he wonders with a chill in his blood, would it be him in Tony Stark’s place if he had been around? Would it be Bucky grimacing as he tried to make excuses for Steve? Would it be Bucky recovering from being beaten up because Steve had gotten into a fight, if it weren’t for him being HYDRA’s pet assassin?

 

And now that Tony Stark had washed his hands of Steve, now that Bucky was free of his triggers, would he go back to being his best friend’s keeper?

 

 _'Not as good as I remembered'_ , the voice said and Bucky winced.

 

It was the truth that the voice was saying and he knew that now.

 

* * *

 

They’re going back to the States. T’Challa had worked something out and they were going ‘home’.

 

Bucky didn’t feel like he was going home. The rest were excited but he wasn’t. Home had been a small apartment in Romania.

 

And he was right to be wary. It wasn’t home, not even close. They weren’t pardoned as much as they were kept under watch. And Bucky was under the closest watch of them all. After all, _he_ was the man for whom Captain America would take on the world. Losing sight of a bargaining chip like him was not a mistake they were willing to make.

 

Steve didn’t seem to notice. He talked of his confinement as them ‘keeping him safe’. He went out on missions and came back, wanting to talk about Peggy, about the Howling Commandos and about Erskine, again.

 

And Bucky chafed under the lock and key he was under. Again. It was grating to be a prisoner, grating to be used but not even as an actual asset, no, just as a memory,a relic. Kept in a safe little box where no one could touch him.

 

“Tough mission?” He asks Steve when he returns, hoping against hope that his friend could tell him something good, something useful, something about the world outside.

 

“It was fine,” Steve pauses before turning to him with a  warm smile and Bucky’s gut clenches because he knows well what will follow, “Remember back when the Howlin-”

 

“Enough of your stupid sniveling about the past!”

 

And Steve startles, “Bucky?”

 

But, there was only so much patience in him after all.

 

“I loved you like a brother, like family. But you don’t have to _like_ family to love them and I _don’t_ like you. I enabled you in your bad behaviour by letting it slide, by not telling you that you were in the wrong in most of them. I thought it would be too much for you if you got beat up and then had me tell you that you deserved it. I was wrong to do that and I see it now. I let you become this bully of a person, and that was wrong of me. I didn’t see the serum coming.

I didn’t see you living long enough to make such a huge nuisance of yourself.

I was wrong. I fucked up. And now, I’m paying the price. You’re exactly how I remembered, whiny and entitled but with a ticker that’s finally working. And the more you talk, the more I wish it _wasn’t_.”

 

He spits out the words and doesn’t regret a single one. Steve looks at him aghast and Bucky can only feel relieved that he has finally, _finally_ said what he was thinking.

 

Love turns to hate with ease. It doesn’t take much, only a thought that makes you doubt things, question things you never thought to question before. It takes root easily enough and once it does, it grows, tall and strong.

 

 

_And I watered it in fears,_

_Night & morning with my tears: _

_And I sunned it with smiles,_

_And with soft deceitful wiles._

 

_And it grew both day and night._

_Till it bore an apple bright._

_And my foe beheld it shine,_

_And he knew that it was mine._

_-William Blake_

**Author's Note:**

> I just had a compulsion to write Bucky having an epiphany while watching food related youtube videos. I don't know why, but that urge just came to me like a craving for pizza, too difficult to deny. No joke, I did not care what the topic was, if it was crack or what, but it needed to have Bucky watching food videos. I don't know why. 
> 
> ...And now I want pizza.
> 
> This entire note does not go with the rest of the story, I know, but pizza. I will probably regret writing this note once I actually eat something. Apparently wanting pizza disorients me. I'm glad I did the editing before the pizza pangs set in.
> 
> Ending the rant now. Need pizza.


End file.
